The research will study the behaviours, styles, beliefs and values of board-level executives who have previously pursued a significant career in IT management. We refer to this group as 'role-models' for ambitious CIOs. We will:

Conduct a widespread, high-level poll to understand the personality traits of today's CIOs.
Ask the population of role models to complete psychometric tests to assess their behaviour in relation to other people, their innermost values and drivers, their way of achieving their aims, and how their approach differs from that of others. Individual responses will obviously be kept confidential, but we expect to draw out patterns that can act as guides for others.
Supplement the results of the instruments with structured interviews that include a feedback loop to ensure that interviewees make useful discoveries about themselves whilst validating the results of the tests.

The key questions to be addressed by this research include:

What distinguishes the role models from the majority of CIOs?
How can CIOs modify their behaviour and the image that they project to sustain their career progression?